so are they or aren't they?

It drives me a bit nuts that the hens cannot quite make up their minds on whether or not to mature. Sort of :) I'm happy they're still little girls scratching and playing and learning new games and building up their distinctive vocabularies of peeps, honks, murmurs, chirps, clucks and squawks.

I'm noticing their combs and wattles change color like I used to change my hair-color back in the 1980s, but sub the purples and carrots with red and pink. Red, then pink, then red, then pale, then red, then pink and pale and red, then all shades at once. They tend to get worked up and red when I'm feeding treats, now. Especially the little 'woohoo hoo hoo hoo!'-ing rhode island reds who spazz out if I so much as open the door to the run with something in my hand.

The buffs tend to stick with pink and deeper pink, and the 'lorps just look red and angry when they're worked up.

One of the buffs, I think Josefina, thinks that my pants are food, or that pecking at them will mean more treats faster. She almost pecked a button off my pants pocket yesterday, dingbat. Never mind the ass-pecking incident on Saturday where I jumped three feet in the air because she got me squarely on one ass-cheek after being hypnotized by my plaid shorts. Again, dingbat. I picked her up and she squuuaaaaaaawwwwked bitterly for a minute, then trilled a moment and finally shut up because I was stroking her head. She's all feathers. The buffs look like they're easily five pounds, because they look as dense and heavy as a sack of flour, but they're probably a pound and a half, wet.

I need to take more pictures

Oh my gosh these kids are getting big and fat.

The buffs look like feather balls of fluff with beaks and feet. The 'lorps look like hens, and the reds are still the smallest ones but they're total live wires and damn near mug me for the treats when I go into the enclosure with their radish tops and mushroom stems and whatever else has taken a detour from the compost pile.

But they're putting themselves to bed now. I don't have to woman-handle and toss them into the coop at dusk anymore (thank heavens...).